Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
AsaA. Helm
Department of Anthropology
Northern Kentucky University
Background
Franz Boas (1858-1942), a well known and highly thought of anthropologist
is sometimes referred to as the father of American anthropology. He grew up
a German born Jew under the roof of a prosperous businessman and a some-
what unusual, but civically active mother who founded the first Froebel Kin-
dergarten. He spent the first nineteen years of his life in this environment,
where he took an interest in botany and various other natural sciences
(Kroeber 1943:5), which would later play greatly into his research methods.
His academic career continued at universities in Heidelburg and Bonn where
he studied geography and physics. He continued on to obtain his doctorate at
Kiel in 1881. His dissertation, "Contributions to the Understanding of the
Color of Water", dealt with the absorption, reflection, and the polarization of
light in seawater (Kroeber 1943:5). Bohannon and Glazer with regards to
Boas' transition to anthropology state:
Cultures to Boas were unique and entirely separate entities, and therefore
could in no way, shape, or form be compared to another even ifunder similar
social, economic, and environmental conditions. Boas wanted to study each
culture in its entirety rather than in bits and pieces. By studying a unique cul-
ture in its entirety; by investigating customs, language, social systems, and by
even collecting physical measurements, one can understand a cultures' psy-
chology. Hyatt goes on to say that ,"merging these together, the anthropolo-
gist could then penetrate the 'psychological factors' that shaped a culture and
ascertain the extent to which 'historical connections' contributed to the life-
style of a given society" (1990:43).
Boas' early viewpoints on culture showed he thought very little of the individ-
ual on the whole. This is in direct opposition to Malinowski's views, but over
time Boas changed his views somewhat, though not to the extent of Mali-
nowski's. This created a rift between his followers on the importance of the
individual within a society (McGee and Warms 2000:137). This view
changed in part due to his realization that whether or not the person was
"typical" to his/her society, the society or culture therein has boundaries set
up to keep individuals within the norms of what is and what is not acceptable
to them. Boas used this also as a crutch supporting his view on the collection
of data from informants. He felt that he could obtain all the knowledge
needed to understand a culture from a few key people. This is in part also to
the fact that one can only obtain knowledge from persons willing to or having
the time to dispense it (Goldschmidt 1959:58-59).
Bronislaw Malinowski - Functionalism, Participant Observation
and the Individual
"The archfunctionalist of anthropology, Malinowski is regarded as a founder
of modern functionalism in anthropology" (Bohannon and Glazer 1973:274).
His ideas of functionalism point to the needs ofthe individual in turn become
the needs of the society. Bohannon and Glazer comment that,
Conclusion
Nearly sixty years after their deaths, which coincidently both happened in
1942, Franz Boas and Bronislaw Malinowski still continue to be central to
the discipline of anthropology. The approaches, schools of thought, and
methodologies introduced by Boas and Malinowski are still paramount to the
field. This was seen at an early time when A.R. Radcliffe-Brown described
the emergences of these trends in 1929. He said there were two different and
opposing tendencies in the study of culture. One being the American based
view of Franz Boas, which he called the most popular. This regards culture
purely from the historical standpoint, and "attempts, in the absence of any
historical records, to multiply and elaborate hypothetical reconstructions of
an unknown past." The second view, associated with the British and Mali-
nowski, had to do with treating each culture as a "functionally interrelated
system and to endeavor to discover the general laws of function for human
society as a whole." He goes on to say, "It does not neglect the historical
point of view, but regards the processes of social change as something to be
studied by actual observation over a period, or by the use of authentic and de-
tailed records." This process accepts history but rejects hypothetical history
(Naroll & Naroll1973:187).
Whether or not Boas or even Malinowski would have accepted this point of
view is inconsequential. The fact of the matter is that the point was made
about the differences in method. To say one is better than the other is not
only impractical, but also irrelevant. No one way of doing something can be
entirely right or entirely wrong. So is the case with this. People use things to
their liking, or as the use suits them, and ethnography is not (at least should-
n't be) any different.
Barnouw, Victor
1971 An Introduction to Anthropology. Volume Two - Ethnology. The Dorsey
Press, Homewood, Illinois.
Goldschmidt, Walter
1958 The Anthropology of Franz Boas - Essays on the Centennial of His Birth, in
American Anthropologist, Memoir NO. 89. The American Anthropological As-
sociation, New York.
Hyatt, Marshall
1990 Franz Boas, Social Activist - The Dynamics of Ethnicity. Greenwood Press,
New York.
Kroeber, A. L.
1943 Franz Boas - 1858-1942, in American Anthropologist. Vol. 45 July-September,
1943. The American Anthropological Association, New York.
Lowie, Robert H.
1937 The History of Ethnological Theory. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York.
Malinowski, Bronislaw
1922 Argonauts of the Western Pacific. Routledge, London.
Voget, Fred W.
1975 A History of Ethnology. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York.